Mining the Minors: Zechariah (19)

Israel has a problem today, and it’s not a new one. It’s a leadership problem.

I’m not talking about Mr. Netanyahu specifically, though there are many who object to his policies and those of all his predecessors going back to David Ben-Gurion in 1949, when Israel became a nation again for the first time in 1900 years. All politicians take a certain amount of flak from the critics. That’s normal. Some are objectively better than others, but all have their limitations.

Israel’s leadership problem is uniquely pervasive, not limited to prime ministers and politicians. It’s an epidemic of ineffectiveness, corruption and lack of foresight afflicting just about every Jew who has exercised authority over his fellow Jews since Ezra and Nehemiah: religious or political, official or unofficial, in Palestine or abroad, overtly or covertly, from the intertestamental period right up until today. Israel’s shepherds have been uniformly awful, exposing glaring deficiencies in morality, consistency and humility that only the personal presence of Christ can truly resolve.

That’s the subject of the next two chapters of Zechariah.

III. Two Oracles (continued)

1/ Against the Nations (continued)

Zechariah 10:1-2 – The Restoration of Millennial Israel and Destruction of its Enemies

“Ask rain from the Lord in the season of the spring rain, from the Lord who makes the storm clouds, and he will give them showers of rain, to everyone the vegetation in the field. For the household gods utter nonsense, and the diviners see lies; they tell false dreams and give empty consolation. Therefore the people wander like sheep; they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd.”

Shepherd Care in Short Supply

When there is no rain, you can’t grow food. You can’t meet your most basic needs. An absence of rain is both a personal and national problem. Bad weather affects everyone. It changes the dynamics of your household for the worse, and creates just as much havoc in the economy as in the home.

Verse 2 clarifies the problem. It’s not literal rain that’s gone missing. The prophet is using famine caused by lack of rainfall as a metaphor for thirst and hunger, both spiritual and political. As a nation, future Israel will be impotent and directionless. As individuals, they will try the broken cisterns and find the waters fail. In a theocracy, you can’t separate those two concepts. Living under religious law, they are inextricably tied together.

Future Israel’s problem is a complete absence of useful leadership. Its people, Zechariah says, will be subjected to an endless stream of nonsense, lies, false dreams and empty consolation. All levels of perceived authority and all sources of useful instruction will come up empty. Shepherd care will be in short supply.

Ask Rain from the Lord

This was exactly what the Lord Jesus pointed out to Israel in his first advent, and the “shepherds” of that day disliked his candor immensely. Four centuries had passed, and no modern equivalent for Ezra or Nehemiah had come along to shepherd Israel through its trials. No new generation of leaders would arise to explain the law of God to its people or maintain walls to protect them from their enemies. It’s not without reason that the Lord Jesus pronounces seven woes on the Pharisees immediately prior to launching into Matthew 24’s discussion of the signs of the end of the age and his return. Pride, hypocrisy, greed, selfishness, lawlessness — every moral violation and defective practice of those first century Pharisees — have continued to work their way through the nation like leaven ever since. The teachers of Israel became not just hypocrites, but a synagogue of Satan. The shepherds starved the sheep and persecuted the true people of God. The crowds to whom Jesus came were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”, just as Zechariah had prophesied. The context there, if you look, is not Roman oppression, but spiritual famine.

Zechariah says there is a remedy for all this. “Ask rain from the Lord in the season of spring rain.” Discern the times and the seasons, and cry out for relief, as Daniel did when reading the prophecy of Jeremiah. Only the Lord can provide rain. Only the Lord can provide competent, loving shepherds. All human solutions will fail.

Zechariah 10:3-5

“My anger is hot against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders; for the Lord of hosts cares for his flock, the house of Judah, and will make them like his majestic steed in battle. From him shall come the cornerstone, from him the tent peg, from him the battle bow, from him every ruler — all of them together. They shall be like mighty men in battle, trampling the foe in the mud of the streets; they shall fight because the Lord is with them, and they shall put to shame the riders on horses.”

Though future Israel will have terrible leadership, God will ultimately judge them for their abuses. “My anger is hot against the shepherds.” With good reason. Righteous leaders teach others to lead. They do not hoard authority. They teach shepherding skills to others so more people can be blessed with appropriate guidance, direction, help and care. When Israel was functioning properly under the Law of Moses, it did not just have kings, but also princes, nobles, priests, prophets, elders and judges. When it was not, they all became a shriveled and pathetic caricature of themselves, abusing their offices and lining their pockets.

Very early on, we find God’s remedy for a leaderless people: the Lord of hosts. The Lord who leads. The Lord who cares for his flock, unlike all others. When the Lord of hosts comes to dwell with his people and shepherd them, he will raise up others to positions of godly leadership. The cornerstone upon whom you can build. The tent peg who holds up your home. The battle bow who will defend you. Every ruler, all of them together.

Take this group of leaders out to battle, and you can conquer the world. Israel will do that physically and literally, just as the Lord Jesus once raised up a group of eleven fishermen, tax collectors and resistance fighters who took the gospel to the entire world of their day and transformed it spiritually within a few generations. The key is always this: that “the Lord is with them”.

Zechariah 10:6-7

“I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph. I will bring them back because I have compassion on them, and they shall be as though I had not rejected them, for I am the Lord their God and I will answer them. Then Ephraim shall become like a mighty warrior, and their hearts shall be glad as with wine. Their children shall see it and be glad; their hearts shall rejoice in the Lord.”

Zechariah’s prophecy assumes Judah is already in the land when the Lord begins his work. Judah only needs strengthening, not salvation. The beginnings of this prophetic fulfilment may already be in place. The prophecy also presumes Ephraim or Joseph is still at large as a result of the Assyrian exile, and will be out there until the end, at which time the Lord of hosts will bring them home and reunite them with their brothers. “Ephraim” or “Joseph”, as mentioned in other posts, are shorthand for all the ten “lost” tribes of the northern kingdom.

All the Prophets Speak

We saw the restoration of the house of Joseph implied in chapter 9, where Ephraim first becomes God’s arrow against spiritual Greece in the wake of the great tribulation, after which Ephraim will be able to put away its chariots, and the Lord will speak peace to the nations for a thousand years.

That is not a message unique to Zechariah. All the prophets describe the end-times restoration of the ten tribes from throughout the world. The earthly kingdom of God will be established when both Judah and Israel have returned to Palestine. Isaiah says it. Jeremiah says it. Ezekiel says it. Daniel does not quite say it, but he distinguishes Judah from Israel and prays on behalf of all Israel, despite being a Jew, which shows where his expectations lay. Hosea, Joel, Amos and Obadiah all declare it. Micah says it. Even Nahum mentions it. It’s also mentioned in Matthew 24, where the angels will gather the elect belonging to the Son of Man from the four winds. That’s not the rapture of the church. He’s referencing Zechariah 2:6 and probably Ezekiel 37:9, both of which speak of revived Israel.

So then, the return of the lost tribes is not a “motif” that “first appeared in the post-biblical era”, as Wikipedia has it, cobbled together, perhaps, by members of the early church. Rather, it is the consistent, ringing theme of all the Old Testament prophets. Ephraim will be a mighty warrior, and his children shall see it and be glad. God keeps his promises.

On Mules and Dromedaries

Let me quote a single example from Isaiah:

“And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord.”

The difficulties of claiming such a passage has already been fulfilled literally and historically or that it has its fulfillment allegorically in the church are, to me, insuperable.

So then, many from the ten tribes will return prior to Armageddon, gathered by the Lord, to fight alongside their brothers in its final engagement. Others, perhaps barely aware of their connection to Israel and the promises after so many thousands of years, will be gathered by the nations afterward and brought home.

Zechariah 10:8-12

“ ‘I will whistle for them and gather them in, for I have redeemed them, and they shall be as many as they were before. Though I scattered them among the nations, yet in far countries they shall remember me, and with their children they shall live and return. I will bring them home from the land of Egypt, and gather them from Assyria, and I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon, till there is no room for them. He shall pass through the sea of troubles and strike down the waves of the sea, and all the depths of the Nile shall be dried up. The pride of Assyria shall be laid low, and the scepter of Egypt shall depart. I will make them strong in the Lord, and they shall walk in his name,’ declares the Lord.”

A greatly expanded national footprint is a prophetic expectation, including more than just the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Lebanon is currently … well, Lebanese. It does not belong to modern Israel. Gilead sits in modern-day Jordan. The descendants of the ten lost tribes will pack these places until there is no room for them, implying vast numbers throughout the world today are descended from Israel’s exiles. Given that over two-and-a-half thousand years have passed, this should surprise nobody. Some are currently in Assyria and Egypt, and these nations too will give them up to the home-call of God.

Whistling or “hissing”, as the KJV has it, is everywhere else in scripture associated with judgment. When God whistled for the nations in times past, he was calling them in judgment on Israel. When people hissed at Judah or Israel, it was because they were astonished at the desolation God had poured out on her.

This is not that. When God whistles for Ephraim, he is finally calling all his people home. “I have redeemed them, and they shall be as many as they were before”, strong in the Lord and walking in his name. The irony will be thick on the ground.

Zechariah 11:1-3

“Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars! Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, for the glorious trees are ruined! Wail, oaks of Bashan, for the thick forest has been felled! The sound of the wail of the shepherds, for their glory is ruined! The sound of the roar of the lions, for the thicket of the Jordan is ruined!”

Scripture often uses the metaphor of a great tree of one sort or another to describe leaders of men. One has only to think of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4 of a great tree with its top branches reaching to heaven, which was a picture of Nebuchadnezzar himself. A cedar in Lebanon is one of the most common of these, cropping up at least four times in the Old Testament.

These last three verses of this passage simply describe in poetic language the punishment of the false shepherds, those who feed the people of God nonsense, lies, false dreams and empty consolation. The repetition of “their glory is ruined” clearly identifies the shepherds with the great trees, felled and burnt. They have received their judgment, and nobody is particularly happy about it.